The Studio Notes archive.

A man looking into two tubs of pringles.

The man who designed the Pringles tube was so proud of it that his children buried some of his ashes in one. By today's standards, it is also a packaging... Read more...

ISSUE 10. TWO LIVE DUCKS AND A WATCH STRAP

For about 250 years, women didn't have pockets sewn into their clothes. They tied them on. Then those pockets disappeared, and I've spent the last two years trying to make... Read more...

ISSUE 09. SUPERGRAPHICS, THE STRIPE THAT CHANGED THE ROOM

A designer most people have never heard of, a building that looked like a prison, and the moment graphic design climbed off the page and onto the walls. Read more...

Cartoon image man in pinstripe suit. Speech bubble "Looking Sharp!"

ISSUE 08. THE STRIPE THAT TURNED AROUND.

The stripe that won't sit still, turned ninety degrees. My first fancy City suit, why I thought pinstripes made me look taller, and what a Victorian physicist and a bag... Read more...

ISSUE 07. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TEMPORARY

We had another idea. Then people started telling us they liked this one. Read more...

Beach front, with striped deck chairs and umbrellas.

ISSUE 06. FOR THE LOVE OF STRIPES

A striped hood, a prison in New York, and a sailor in the water. One pattern, doing the same job for eight hundred years. Read more...

ISSUE 05. NEVER GREY

Last week I left you at the airport, watching the bags go by. Here’s how we ended up in that airport, so to speak. Before we made anything, we went... Read more...

ISSUE 04. THE END OF THE PLAIN PLANE

Seven coloured planes, seventeen thousand redesigned items, and a promise: fly with us seven times, never fly the same colour twice. What a 1965 airline campaign has to do with... Read more...

ISSUE 03. THE ORIGIN OF OUR NAME

A tweet that toppled a bank, a doctor's polite suggestion, and five words that ended up on a beach in Portugal. Sera on where the name actually comes from. Read more...

ISSUE 02. THE SMALLEST FLOW NEVER REACHES THE SHELF

A decade putting pieces on the shelves at Fortnum & Mason taught Sioux one rule. What happened when she finally applied her standards to something of her own. Read more...

ISSUE 01. I HAVE A CONFESSION

Sera's is the messier desk. This letter explains why that's exactly how the pockets got made: prototypes, mistakes, and a shopping habit that turned into a business. Read more...